The Dead Romantics (37)

It was all I could do to leave with my head intact.

Seaburn sat down on the stool next to me. “Your mom does things in her own way, on her own time. We should leave her to it.”

That didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. And focusing on my mother felt a lot more constructive than focusing on my own sadness. Hers I felt like I could at least try to fix. Mine? It was a hole in my chest filled with all of the things that made my grief so heavy, it was hard to breathe sometimes.

I gave the mayor one last good scrub behind his ears before I resumed my seat and took another long gulp of my rum and Coke.

Seaburn and I had graduated within a few years of each other. He was a junior when I started at Mairmont High. His family owned and maintained St. John’s of Mairmont Cemetery on the other side of town, so it felt only natural that, when Dad needed someone to help manage the funeral business, he asked Seaburn if he wanted to work together. For the last seven years or so, Dad and Seaburn had managed the funerals and the gravesite services for the majority of the town. And apparently Dad had started to train Alice in the same thing.

“You’re more than welcome to keep me company,” I said. “I’m not up to much. Just . . .” I waved at my Word document.

Seaburn asked Dana for a beer, and asked me, “Still writing?”

“Stubbornly.”

He barked a laugh. “Good! I liked your first book—Ardently Yours. So funny. Loved the romance bits, too.”

“Oh no”—I burrowed my face in my hands—“please tell me you didn’t read it.”

“Don’t worry, I closed my eyes during the sex scenes.”

I groaned into my hands, mortified.

“We even did a book club for it when it came out,” he went on. “Everyone loved it. It was—I dunno how to describe it.” He tilted his head, taking another sip of his beer. “Happy’s a close word.”

That was flattering, especially from Seaburn, who read so much and so widely my reading habits probably paled in comparison. “A romance leaves you happy—or at least content—at the end. Or it’s supposed to. I think.”

Because I didn’t know anymore.

“It was good. You’re a fantastic writer,” he added. “I think everyone in Mairmont bought a copy.” If only the sales in my small hometown could have changed the course of that book, my entire life could have been so, so much different.

I rubbed my thumb against the condensation on my glass.

The mayor came and put his head on my lap. I scrubbed him good behind the ears again, and his tail assaulted the floor. THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP—

“Thanks,” I said, because I felt as though I didn’t deserve that sort of praise—not in my current predicament. “I’m trying.”

“All anyone can do,” Seaburn replied, and then took a deep breath. “And speaking of trying something . . . I heard from Carver that you’re taking on the old man’s will alone.”

“No one else has time.”

“That’s not true.”

I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I can do it. Everyone else has things to do, and anything I can do to help out . . . I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve been kind of MIA for the last ten years,” I added sarcastically.

“The town ran you out. There’s a difference.”

“But I could’ve come back, right? It wasn’t like I was ostracized or anything. I was just . . .”

Bullied. Called ghoulie behind my back. My social media was bombarded, day after day, with memes and names and joking questions of “Can you solve the Black Dahlia next?” And “Do you commune with the devil?”

Or, more commonly, liar.

All because I helped a ghost solve his own murder when I was thirteen—too young to know better but too old to chalk it up to imaginary friends.

“No one who knows you faulted you for leaving,” Seaburn replied sternly. He reached over to my hand and took it tightly. My knuckles grated together, how hard he squeezed. “Especially not your dad.”

A knot formed in my throat. “I know.”

But it was still nice to hear.

“I just want to help my family,” I said helplessly. “This is the only thing I know I can do. Or at least try to. Carver and Alice . . .” They had been talking about finances with Mom before I came to breakfast this morning, and had changed the subject way too quickly to be inconspicuous about it. They had meetings today with Dad’s life insurance reps, and the budget for the funeral—and I wanted to do something, anything, to help. “They’ve already done a lot. A lot more than me. This is the least I can do, right?”

Seaburn sighed. “You don’t have to do everything alone, love.”

But oh, it was easier that way.

“Thank you,” I said instead, with a soothing smile I’d learned over the years of saying, I’m fine.

“All right, just as long as you know,” Seaburn said, and raised his glass. “To the old man. The weirder, the better.”

“The weirder, the better,” I replied, and we clinked glasses and drank quietly. When he’d finished his beer, he checked the time and figured he’d ought to start moseying home, so I thanked him for the conversation and went to give one last pat to the mayor—but he was gone.